May 2, 2016 - Adam's videos and pics today - Tahitian ward party!

Update from Becky: I only saw videos and pictures in Adam's emails today, but later I noticed another email that had a great letter with lots of enthusiasm about the work and a fun ward party the missionaries put on. I'm adding the letter at the end of the post. 

Elder Kaoanohi playing ukulele and singing! I can tell Adam is doing background harmonizing. Fun!!

Frere Rochette going hard in a solo dance at the Tahitian party

One last one .... HAHAHAHAHA

ELDER kaoanohi crashed out on the floor....nice....

Tahitian Party @ Troyes Ward April 29 2016 :D

All the dudes getting up to follow Frere Rochette in a dance

Frere Rochette goign hard in a solo dance

There you go, it was super legit to see, reminded me a little bit of
the Piula family. Because that's like the only other time in my life
when I've seen legit Polynesian dancing. It's pretty cool! Wish yall
could have been there.

Other Pics 

Also I forgot to mention, Brother and Sister Rochette (above) taught

Julia with us last Wednesday and then took us out to dinner after!! It

was super chill :D :D Thanks Rochettes we love you guys!

This is the very tunnel the English surrounded to trap and capture

Joan of Arc. she was captured here in Compiegne and then burned at the

stake in Rouen in northern france. Pretty cool huh?

Love you lots family! Mom and Dad thanks for your emails. Holy cow you
picture bombed me mom that was awesome!! :) hahaha. If you want I
could start an iCloud thing maybe that would make it easier to share
photos. Would you like me to do that?

Thanks for all the updates, glad to see everyone is well. Happy to
hear about your conference, Mom, sounds like life chilled out for you
Dad since your big trial (thank goodness), and BOY GABE IS TALL. HOLY
CRAP. O.O Dude he's gonna beat me up when I get back (you can tell him
I said that, I want it to be a challenge :) ) But man seriously that
kid is tall! You're a tall baby bro bro! You are no longer the little
Geeber who would stick his one arm out of the burrito wrap. Heck nah.
Anyways love you lots and thanks for the update.

I'm also excited about mother's day call! Holy cow Mom calm down it'll
be okay. Haha you can wait a week. Miss you lots too. No worries. I
think Elder Kaonohi's mom was the most excited in his famiy too. Haha
she called it "Christmas and Skype day" hahaha if you picture that in
her cool Tahitian accent it's pretty funny. Anyways so I was thinking
we could start in between 4-6 PM my time. Have you changed to
daylight savings this spring yet? If you have, you should be 8 hours
behind me, so that would be in between 8-10 AM your time. We
have permission for an hour, but I really don't care if we go over,
this is my last mission call and I won't get to see you guys for a
while. Haha I can't let my vision get clouded with the end yet. But it
is close, huh? Getting weird. I will be starting my 13th trasnfer next
Monday and I already hit my six months to...uh...attractive :D haha
yeah so it's weird.

I am going to briefly summarize the week and then barrage you with
photos and videos. BTW, it is possibly near the end of my stay in
Troyes, this last week or two went by CRAZY fast, holy cow!!! It flies
sometimes. It's only been 3 months since we got here, but since we
came in at the same time, ad it is unusual to spend more than 3 months
with one companion, one of us will probably be out, and we're having
feelings maybe somebody will, even though we would REALLY LIKE IT if
we BOTH STAYED. Might be smart to send stuff to the mission address
here for the next couple weeks just in case. Just FYI it would break
my heart to leave right now. I'd be really really sad. We will find
out for sure Saturday so we can talk about it Sunday. It'd break my
heart. I love the Rochette family, they're great. They're so inspired
and do so much good work, not to mention the Tahitian Fete they pretty
much put on by themselves haha. I just love a lot of people here we
have so many great members and amis. The Elder's Quorum President is
really cool. But yeah I just really feel like we click well with so
many of our members and they're firing up with missionary work. It's
awesome. Can't wait to talk about the Tahitian ativity later in the
email.

We had a lot of great stuff happen this week, among th emain things
our Tahitian Fete or Party, a great lesson with Julia and Brother and
Sister Rochette, she's progressing well, we were also able to give her
a baptismal date for June 4. So we're hoping that'll go through. She's
REALLY legit. Really cool. She's our best, most progressing
investigator. So everybody pray for her please.

I read a lot about self-mastery in scripture and non-study time in the
Ensign and Liahona and that kind of stuff. It was really good. Learned
about spiritual strength. There's a really good talk by President
Faust, the dear sweet brother who was in the first presidency for so
many years, about it, I encourage you to look it up. It's from the
April 2000 General Conference and it's called "The Power of Self
Mastery." SO GOOD. I also read some other resources about it, I
encourage you to search in Gospel Library about it, you find some
pretty powerful stuff. Search it in the scriptures. He says that in
short, self-mastery or self denial is the ability to do the thigns you
need to do when you need to do them, and to not do the things you are
not supposed to do. :) Thought that was pretty cool. Love reading
stuff that challenges us to be manly. Gotta be a man right. Learned a
lot about that. Really good lessons, please read that.

Now--the Tahitian fete. It was SO MUCH FUN. WOW. It was originally a
missionary activity but our ward mission leader honestly did a
terrible job supporting us, literally did just about nothing about it,
so we needed a lot of help from the Tahitian family, the Rochettes.
They took up the slack from us! Me and Elder Kaonohi, we didn't really
know what to do, either. So we just kind of asked everyone to come
Friday night (planned well in advance), to bring a dessert or main
dish with an island theme, and to bring friends. HOLY COW AT LEAST SIX
non-member people showed up with their member friends, it was AMAZING.That is a TON for such a small ward as this. We are really getting
firey I feel, or at least we are improving a lot. People have told us
that we're helping the ward a lot. I really hope so. It's the Lord who
does all the good anyway, though, no need for us to say it's us
because it's not. But yeah, there you go. We had about 25 or 30 chairs
set up (an enormous amount compared to other activities we've thrown
here, like our movie nights where 12 is really good) and BOOM so many
people come that the seats were filled, people took other chairs in
the corner of the room by the performers, and there were people spread
all the way out into the hall. Man it was awesome. Such a big success
for the ward. The bishop was there, Frere Rochette is the first
counselor, so he was there, Brother Chilla, whose house we were at
earlier today, brought a really cool happy friend, Sister Amantchi, a
sister from Cote d'Ivoire, brought TWO (what a beast right) and the
Rochettes also brought a full family pretty much, a mom who really
liked talking to me and Elder Kaonohi and who was really chill, cool
lady. She said she hoped she could come over to the Rochettes house
next time we would be up there so that's rpetty sweet huh? It is
amazing to see how amazed people get when we describe our service to
them. They really get genuinely surprised bcause they're not members,
and for all those who aren't jerks, they really respect and cherish
that service because we give it freely and we have families and stuff.


ANYWAYS we had a ton of dancing, us the elders, we did a Mauri (New
Zealand) Haka (not the same one as in Forever Strong), and it was
really cool, Sister Rochette and her daughters did some cool Tahitian
dances, it was just all around awesome. So much music, fun, and
dancing, and then there was a TON of food after. Best time ever.
Coolest and best success of a ward activity I've ever had in my
mission, I think I can say, at least for a while. So yeah. All you
elders and sisters--do activities! They work. Just get the ward
involved and tell them to bring friends. It was super legit. Even
though we didn't ask for any phone numbers to avoid pressuring the
amis, we had a good time talking to one or two, and we're going to
follow up with each of the members to ask how their friends liked it
and how we can see them again (another activity, an appointment, an
FHE, etc.) So yeah, really cool right?! Huge success, that also marks
the end of our member work transfer with that activity, but the work
continues on until forever!! We do killer work here in Troyes with the
members, we take pride in it. Also had 5 amis [investigators] in church yesterday, it
was awesome! Some Sundays Gospel Doctrine just seems to be packed. I'm
so glad, we are so blessed!! Thanks Heavenly Father! He is just
pouring in people for us to teach and it feels awesome. I feel like
there is so much He wants us to do, so many people He wants us to see,
here in this possibly last week for us together here in Troyes. It'll
be an epic week.

Yesterday we went by the Majokko house and taught Nathalie and Martiel
for the second time, as well as a new friend in their house, Joseph.
(Ironic--haha learning about the Mormon Church, his name is Joseph,
but he was super sarcastic and jokey for a while, hahaha who cares)
Was interesting quick PoS lesson but hey we got Joseph to soften up
because we answered all his dumb funny questions with in a straight up
way and we just took it so seriously he had to respect us. Haha. Even
asked us to come by tomorrow and pray for him before he heads back to
Guyana for a vacation so that's cool. They're all family members of a
member who was here but is currently there on vacation, cool because
it gives us the chance to teach them a little bit. How can we make
them legit and interested? Ahaha that's the next question.

Also saw our new ami Remy this week, he was really cool and is going
through a lot of confusion and stuff. really hope that guy figures
stuff out if you could pray for him that'd be great.

Also we went to the Ganga family's house today. Had lunch. Ate
tiramisu (no worries it was kosher). Drank alcoholic Peruvian soda.
Nah nah that was a joke. :D haha It's called Inka Kola but ti's just
sweet, no bad stuff in it. Tasted like candy it was kind of good.
Sister Ganga is Peruvian and Brother Ganga is half Spanish half French
so they're a cool family. Really cute kids, their little four year old
Julie reminds me of the cute girls in Tony and Andrea's family. BTW
got to use my running shoes from Tony again today. Was good.

Ok! Love you my family. Have a great week ok? Hope to talk to you
soon, God bless. Prepare for the photo and video barrage. ;D

Love

Elder Edwards

Arpil 25, 2016 - 6 months left -- strong w/ Lord -- giving the Lord my all

WOHHOO!! All right family, thank you Mom and Dad for your awesome
emails. Thank you for sending me those and for telling me about
everything going on at home. Yeah, it's pretty crazy that I am only 6
months away, huh? One thing I'm learning right now, here at the end of
my mission, is how to give my all to the Lord. In putting him as my
first priority now, while I'm still on my mission, it'll make it that
much easier when I get back, when I'll be dating and stuff, to keep
Him always at the #1 place in my life.

I am also working on not stressing.

For many months in my mission, actually since last Fall, I have sort
of been the leader of my companionship: I trained, and I had a
companion or two who struggled, and then since then, I've kind of been
leading here in Troyes because I'm a pretty firey person sometimes I
guess, Elder Kaonohi is super chill and he's a bit younger than me in
the mission, so he's just kind of been like, "You lead, man, go
ahead!" Haha. Not that I'm perfect or anything, there have definitely
been moments when my comps have led out. But for the most part, that's
how it's been. And it's been pretty heavy sometimes. :D So now I'm
realizing, with Elder K's help, how I can rethink this with the Lord
and my companion--for example, this is the Lord's work, I can leave
more of the burden or responsibility with him, it doesn't have to
weigh on my soul all the time, and sometimes I can take the backseat
and let my comp lead. So I'm working on this as well. Dad, do you have
any comments on that? I imagine you had that feeling sometimes too,
and I realized I kind of need to rethink the way I do things or I'll
be dead way before my call has expired, haha!! I need to work hard and
fight my own laziness, it's an inherent weakness in me and it's
something I always have to fight. But I'm looking forward to
continuing to work hard, to pick up speed even, for these last six
months. I want to meet the challenge.

I will now give you a little summary of this week. :)

We did exchanges with Compiegne Tuesday and met a cool JEWISH guy
which I LOVE I have ALWAYS wanted to have a Jewish investigator. He
even said they could come by!! And he was the leader of the Jewish
community at Compiegne! That was realy cool, we saw one or two more
miracles there. Was a really good time.


Wednesday, district meeting. We had a fun time, went to Paris as
usual, and we went to a little crepe/panini shop, and we were able to
see NOTRE DAME on the way back. WOOHOO behold the photos

A Bunch of Short Videos from Adam. The last one is his gorgeous piano playing!

HEY FAMILY! :) Edwardicus in Troyes, Kaonohi, Ward is Doing Well

Captions for pics above (got mixed up which captions go with which pics...) 

There was a random castle here once... Yeah. Hah We saw the ruins of

the walls and stuff it was stinking old. Stil the Eklu chill

The famous champagne vineyards of our region, "Champagne-Ardenne"

Don't worry we only drank a little ;D hahaha nah just kidding

A big pretty valley we got out to see

Hey by the way tell me if this is too much...hope I'm not overloading

your inboxes or brain with too much info or pictures you can tell me

if I am haha I won't be offended

Check it out! The big train station and mall in the middle of Paris,

Chatelet, just got finished within the last few weeks. Really bright

and golden and new. Pretty cool llooking, huh? We were there for

district meeting on Friday. Really cool place to see it's really big

WOW i must be setting records for me haha hope you guys like these

Don't know if I already showed you guys this one but it's funny. The

son of the Faria family (this was at Easter) says the chocolate he had

was disgusting in English, and then his Portuguese mother says in

french in her portoguese accent, "What's does that mean, asgoihfjdiso;klj?!" Hahaha it was so funny

Wow he's good, snuck this one of me while I was playing at a train
station Saturday waiting for a trian. We went to Meaux, in the far
east of the Parisian region, to do our finding day Saturday, by the
way. It was fun.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

HEY FAMILY! :) Edwardicus in Troyes, Kaonohi, Ward is Doing Well


Activities. 

Lots and lots of activities. 

This month, we've been challenged by the mission/zone (as I explained last time) to do more work and activities with the members, be it finding, teaching, or just fun activities. So for April, we're doing three missionary activities. It's pretty awesome. #swag  We already did one of them, the movie night on Friday went well! Normally, the other two we'd seen, we'd only had like a handful of people there, ten or less, but this time we had a good fifteen to twenty people there, that was really good!! :D So now all we need is just for amis to come because they were all members. We'll be ship-shape here in no time! 

The other two activities are coming up quick! This Saturday, we'll be doing a super cool "missionary day" with the members of the ward and the missionaries of our district, so we'll be uniting a whole lot of people in missionary work for several hours. Some will be making calls, some will be teaching, some will be going by their friends and less-active members, it'll be good. We're hoping to see a really good outpouring of the Spirit and to find several people who will be baptized that day. :) So we're just gearing up, getting ready for it. It'll be really powerful if we let it. 

Speaking about gearing up--I read a great chapter about missionary work yesterday in the train, and I would highly recommend it for all people who need motivation in missionary work. It is chapter 33 of President Brigham Young, "Teachings of the Presidents," and MAN it is good. So many profound quotes in there, couldn't recommend it highly enough. 

For example: 

"And when you are called to preach the Gospel on foreign missions, take a course to save every person. There is no man or woman within the pale of saving grace but that is worth saving. There is no intelligent being, except those who have sinned against the Holy Ghost, but that is worth, I may say, all the life [efforts] of an Elder to save in the Kingdom of God."

"...he who goes forth in the name of the Lord, trusting in him with all his heart, will never want for wisdom to answer any question that is asked him, or to give any counsel that may be required to lead the people in the way of life and salvation, and he will never be confounded worlds without end...

"Go forth weeping, bearing precious seed, full of the power of God, and full of faith to heal the sick even by the touch of your hand, rebuking and casting out foul spirits, and causing the poor among men to rejoice, and you will return bringing your sheaves with you [see Psalm 126:5–6]. Let your minds be centered on your missions and labor earnestly to bring souls to Christ."

Wow, just a few examples of that. Haha sorry Mom for all those times I got upset at you for sending me quotes. I understand now I guess why you do that. It's just so important for you that you want it to enlighten me too, and that's a good thing, so you just send me as many quotes and things as you want. I've really liked getting a few of those the past while thank you. :) 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, what happened in general this week? Let me talk a bit about it. 

Had another failed attempt of playing an organ, went but the cathedral was closed for lunch. Haha this sucks!! I'm sick of getting turned down. Oh well, I'll try again. 

Elder Kaonohi has been having foot problems, he's actually had a spur on each foot here for the last WHILE, for many many months, so he just got some good-quality inserts, picked them up Tuesday, and was also able to see a therapist/doctor for the first time Thursday. That was really good. Learned some cool stuff about health--there's always a natural cause of diseases, and it's better to fix the basic health law that's been ignored than it is just to put a bandaid or external fix-it medication on. Confirmed what you guys always taught me, Mom and Dad, but it was good, confirmed that it was true. :) 

Boy, it's been nice, we've been fed a lot here in this ward. Elder Kaonohi said it rivals his last ward in Liege, in Belgium, but I'm just hoping we can get Troyes to blow Liege out of the water. (I like member work, it's a pride thing I guess. :) ) Plus mangez-vous or dinner appointments are great, who doesn't like them? Hahahaha. 

GOOD NEWS--I thought I'd gotten quite fat in the mission--won't hid that--especially my face. Haha. So we had interviews with President and Sister Babin on Friday, with district meeting, and I was talking to Sister Babin, she's so sweet, bless her heart, about how I wanted to lose weight. I was basically just like, "Well, yeah, I need to do this, but I already know how to do it, I just need to lose weight." And she was like, "Really? That's funny, you don't look very fat!" :D :D hahaha even though the "very" might seem funny, it was sincere, she meant I looked normal or skinny. That made me real happy. So just out of curiosity, the day after, I weighed myself and converted the kilograms into pounds, and turns out I have actually LOST WEIGHT on my mission, like 2 to 5 pounds HAHAHAHA :D I died it was so funny. Here I was thinking I was fat and I've actually LOST WEIGHT anyways. Haha I still have some work to do in this department but that was a good boost I guess. (BTW-on the same note there was a time in Charleroi or Nantes where I was pushing a good 20 pounds more than the start of my mission O.O that's not good!! Whew thankful I got over that!! ) I need to gain more muscle. And lose fat. Will do that. Anyways that's all for the health department thank you Mr. Lardwards

Ooo boy we got to teach Julia again, we taught her the Law of Chastity this time and it just went so well. That one's always kind of a scary one to teach because you don't know how you're going to come across, but thankfully the Lord helped it work out well, and Julia took it super well, she was just like, "Yeah, I already live by this, so like, no it's not a problem!" We were like WOOHOOO and WHEN were you getting BAPTIZED again?! No not really we didn't feel right about a date yet but we're feeling it coming real soon! She's been thinking about it a lot she says. But dang yeah there you go, she is living by the Word of Wisdom, the Law of Chastity, and prepared to pay her tithing when she's baptized. It is just an amazing amount of faith and I love seeing it, you just see these people change right in front of your eyes, almost, they change in between appointments a little sometimes and it's just amazing to see.  Been a couple weeks since she's been at church but I'm not worried, we'll get her there next week. She's doing really good. 

We were also able to take a couple trips up to the countryside of our area. We do not have a car, regrettably. Yeah it kind of sucks. But oh well. HOWEVER we have awesome members that drive us way up out of town to their cool country towns and houses, and that is really cool. #picturescomingfolks but yeah, one of them was Frere and Soeur Eklu, they were super cool, he gave us a little tour of his town while we were up there and Frere Eklu has taught with us a bit lately, he's a beast and we want to work with him more. We also took a huge country tour with Frere Serge, who is awesome. We were supposedly going to go do some contacting and stuff in parks around town, but it kind of just ended up being a big tour of the region so...yeah haha kind of P-Day got extended this week. I mean he took us on a several hour drive to see the outer regions of our ward, so what are you going to do, just ask for him to turn around and take you back home? Nah not worth breaking relations with one of the important guys in the ward. Plus we were so far out it would have just been a jerk move. So we were just chill and hung out with him for a few hours. Then had ward mission leader and ward council meeting, those went really well. We're getting our Tahitian Party planned out and the Rochette family offered to help us with that so it is great. We're hoping for a big turnout at that. 

One thing I've been thinking quite a lot about this week is just focusing on my mission. I often have found, throughout my mission, that little distractions or tendencies to be disobedient or have my heart set on other things, these things come up often, and every once in a while, you need to intentionally sort through them, or throw them away. Straightening up is a very necessary part of missionary lifestyle, when your focus gets amiss, you need to get it back on target or you're not nearly as effective and it just gets painful. Reminded me of a Brigham Young quote -- "As to trials, why bless your hearts, the man or woman who enjoys the spirit of our religion has no trials; but the man or woman who tries to live according to the Gospel of the Son of God, and at the same time clings to the spirit of the world, has trials and sorrows acute and keen, and that, too, continually." (Presidents of the Church, chapter 35, emphasis added) In other words, he who loves the Lord and his mission more than enough, more than anything, he will find great blessing in them, and he won't feel like he's giving a great sacrifice; he's just doing what he feels is right, and it is right! But the man who drags his heels, who won't give, that man will have great trials, because he's trying to balance two ideals, the godly and the worldly, which simply do not mix. So this week, I've had one of those moments, and it's been good to get a bit more back on focus. 

I tried to keep the Sabbath day more holy today by playing really good, holy music by MoTab and I felt better it made me happy. 

Today we had some great meetings at church, touching testimony from a youth, a fourteen year old young woman, who said she went to the temple for the first time recently (hadn't had the chance before!! It's crazy how temples are that far away here), and she just cried and talked about how much she appreciated it. Then the rest of sacrament meeting, a high councillor talked about the whole story of how the Paris temple came to be, and that was really interesting! They tried two other cities before they found Le Chenay, and the mayor there has been miraculously supportive which has been a big deal for us. Lots of opposition because so many people in France still see us so badly (e.g. polygamists, cult, whatever, thanks false TV reports you guys are awesome), but lots of people spoke out and meetings and supported it too which was cool. Also got to play piano for sacrament meeting again, that was fun! Loved it. 

Well, just to finish up, we feel we now have a better relationship and respect in the ward's eyes. The missionaries right before us didn't really do a whole lot of work and were just kind of "dead," as we say, didn't get a lot done, so we've been happy to see the change that a lot of members have had, and they really seem to like us, and a lot of them, most of them, even really respect and appreciate us, especially those on the ward council. They're liking how much good we're doing. Working in accordance with the ward and its goals is of greater importance than anyone or anything could say. It's important to stay yourself, though, you need to do this as people who laugh and joke and who have a fun time. But do things, too. Sometimes I'm too lazy, the Lord needs to kick me and wake me up so don't be afraid to do things. 

Okay, well that'll about cap up my week. Thanks guys, love you all my family and hope you are doing well. Hope Zia's bday was good, that Grace's prom went well, excited to talk to you soon. Love ya! Bye. 

April 10, 2016 - Hello dear beloved family! To infinity-- and to Troyes!

My week had nothing to do with the title, that was a complete misadvertisement.

Just kidding, it actually did. Let me tell you a little bit about this
transfer, which we have just started, this month, and this past
week... Shallll we?

Last Tuesday, we had a great time shipping up to St. Merri, the chapel
in the center of Paris, and we had a great zone meeting there.
Officially, we have no zone conference this transfer, which is lame,
but we still had district meeting and zone council--something to help
us kick off the new transfer and see friends  in the zone. It was
really fun and we talked about our game plan.

Got to see lots of people, such as Elder Malloy, Elder Engelbrecht
from the mediterranean (he's really young, third transfer and he just
loves me and Kaonohi because we're so cool haha no just kidding),
Elder Young my old comp who is still my zone leader (I don't think I'm
leaving this zone for a while), Elder Smith who I lived with in
Charleroi, Elder Harris's greenie now zone leader, the Nogent sisters
Woolley and Brown, Sister Nolasco from my group (started mission same
time as me), Elder Beach and his greenie he just got, etc. It's been a
lot of fun.

Anyway, but our game plan for this transfer is to do a BUNCH of member
involvement and to keep working hard (as that was last transfer's
focus, finding new investators), but just to work better. So basically
entails member work, continuing hard work, and activities with the
members. Allow me to go more into detail on the Troyes dream team
action going down to the east of Paris....

For us, we have a pretty hard time getting a lot of excitement going
in the ward. Our ward mission leader, bless his heart, has been very
very busy with school and work and so has his wife, so he has very
little time and hasn't put very much energy into helping us out with
our missionary cause as long as we've been here. So we're really
looking to pump them up. What did we do? Well, we have three
activities planned for this month, in the next three weeks. 

• One: this Friday, we are doing a movie night at the church, watching a church film and bringing amis so we can make it fun. Should be a blast. 
• Two: we're doing a four to five-hour day of missionary work with as many of the members as will come and all eight missionaries of our district (Elder Divis, Cisneros, Raffanomezana or Raffi for short, me, Kaonohi, Fonua who I met in Nantes we're good buddies, and Allen) and we will BOSS work. WHO yeah. It'll be awesome. The "finding day" as we call it is part of the zone wide transfer program. 
• Then three: we're going to have a Tahitian/Hawaiian Party at the church in a few weeks, with food and music and the haka and everything. It'll be legit. What's even cooler is that the bishop has backed us up with this, normally he has a harder time accepting activities that are less than a month in advance, but I think he likes us so he's being more forgiving here.

Grateful for the Lord who does all these things, makes 'em happen.
Voila our plan for the ward. We're also going to be working with them
a lot in general throughout these next five weeks just to get them to
teach with us and do their own missionary work. Had a member today ask
us to sign and give her a Book of MOrmon for a friend, hope that went
well! We wished them good luck. That's a really good missionary idea,
members giving BoMs to their friends with the missionaries' contact
info inside.

This week, we've basically been trying to teach and visit people and
we sort of just had a lot more chill time than usual. Been kind of
weird. I had a hard day where I just couldn't get myself to contact
somebody Friday, and I've been trying to wake up from that since. Haha
but it'll be okay. Oh yeah, I finally got my haircut. Paid 21.50, the
lady thought we were really cool and said we spoke really good French
for just 18 months out, and then a day or two later saw a place that
only asked for 10....ouch...

We cleaned the church with Jean Michel, we're often teaching somebody
with him or just around him. We also visited Denise, our Ivory Coast
investigator, with Sister Traore, ANOTHER Ivory Coast sister. Boom.
Too much African for Satan to handle. Those people have so much faith!Oh yeah. She was supposed to go to Versailles to see a baptism and
church today but she wasn't able to she was sick...no... Hoping she
will make more efforts to go to church. Also missed a train after that
so just kind of chilled and talked for a couple hours. Romilly sur
Seine--great place, there should be missionaries there and a branch
too. They could, there are enough members, we really think they should
put a branch there.

We also visited with Frere Verrier a bit and that was very cool,
insightful. He has a very strong testimony of the church even though
he never or rarely comes Sunday. But we're still trying to love him
and help him see he has to come. :) He told me some good advice about
not wanting leadership, etc. on the mission, and expressed
appreciation for what we do as missionaries. It was a sweet moment,
tender mercy from the Lord. :)

Also had good ward meetings that night.

Friday we were privileged to have the Vandiver senior couple pass by
to check our apartment, and apparently we keep it in pretty good
shape! :) :) That was pretty good to hear, considering I've been
chastized before for bad apartment upkeep... Haha the only thing they
said was clean the bathtub area. So we were like shoots we're down.
They also brought us a lot of chicken to cook up (meat man it's
awesome) and this massive two pound box of strawberries (HECK YEAH
BABY). It's pretty good, not going to lie. They're so nice.

We got to stop by the Amantchi family. They;re really cool, liked
sharing a message with and hanging out with them. Oh also earlier in
the week we did some service and visited the Largeron family. Ate with
them and they took us to go shopping after too.

ALSO we had this HUGE tender mercy and miracle Friday. We went early
in the morning during study time to go to the UPS building outside of
town--decent bus ride out--and turns out the guy who runs that place
is a MORMON. Holy cow!! We're like No way dude! Also the timing on
this was impeccable, Heavenly Father orchestrated this incredibly
well, because we arrived five minutes after they were actually
supposed to close for a good five hours until the afternoon, and the
nice lady, just walking out, let us in, left us with her bus, and,
well, her boss was like, "The missionaries." And we were  like,
"Hey...do we know you?" Haha this happens a lot. The lady had walked
out by now. He was like, yeah, I'm actually an old member, it's been
ten years since I've been back to church but I had a lot of good
experiences there. 

And we're like TRIP cool man sounds good! He talked
to us some about what he experienced in the church, baptized a while
ago and stayed active and strong for seven years, working like a boss
with the missionaries all the time, loved them. This is like a 35 year
old guy by the way. Come to find out he's made some changes in his
lifestyle that aren't super okay by the Church, he lives with a man
and stuff, hasn't necessarily been keeping the Word of Wisdom super
well. Well you know we just had a bit of a feeling of love for him and
I want to tell you all, everyone, anyone to whom this applies, if
you've broken commandments and strayed, the way is there for you man!
You can come back. Don't hesitate. Don't wait. Don't let other
members' sour or even hurtful attitudes keep you from rushing back to
the Savior's arms. He is standing there, waiting for you. And "His arm
is stretched out still." Don't wait another second, man. He's waiting.

Saturday we did boss work contacting on the street in Auxerre, the
smallest town in our district. Whew people were JERKS there DAAANNGGG
we got some pretty curt responses from people. Nothing like crazy, no
swearing or anything but wow there were some pretty rude people. Hey
it's all good though we're used to it. We still had a really good
lunch and a couple tender mercy nice people contacts, and a member
even sewed up Elder Kaonohi's pants because they were ripped pretty
bad. Haha he had to stand in another room guarded by me and like four
elders so the old sisters sewing it wouldn't walk by and see him in
his underwear hahaha. It was funny. Anyways, that went well, I got to
chill with my good man Elder Divis from Modesto California, he was my
Paris Lilas Zone Leader last transfer and now he's my Compiegne
district leader so I know him already. Anyways we talked some and I
got some good advice on just staying strong, working hard, staying
motivated until the end of my mission. That was really good, good
little talk there. Then we went to the church, upon our return to
Troyes, and made two of the three flyers for the three activities this
month, and printed them out (we now have all three posted on the
church bulletin board and gave little flyers out to members today with
all the info on them they need, hopefully that'll help boost
participation). We then went to the Faria's house--you know, the crazy
Portuguese family who are just totally my favorite. They're so funny.They crack me up. They also feed me which is nice. :D Kidding. Had
some pretty good jokes with their son Benjamin and it was fun. HOLY
COW their dad, Frere Faria, in his fifties or sixties, has really
really dry jokes--Kogan if you read this like you but more dry and in
a different language so harder to understand--and man I just started
understanding all of his jokes all of a sudden last night (whew
language barrier makes humor comprehension hard) and I was like WHOA I
UNDERSTAND YOU ARE FUNNY and then I was like BUT SOME OF THESE JOKES
AREN'T FUNNY SORRY. Haha hey no I'm kidding, he's awesome, he's funny.
Anyways that was our Saturday.

Sunday we had a great day today. I'm writing you Sunday night
actually. Seeing if that lets me write you more and send you more
pictures and videos. I hope so. Some of these videos especially were
overdue. We had a great church meeting this morning, gave out those
flyers to everyone, and met a couple members, and we had a couple
people there so that was good. Didier and Laeticia came, they are rock
amis when it comes to church attendance. Hopefully we'll be able to
see them both soon.

Afterwards, we got this cool random invitation to go to our DMP
BERNARDI's HOUSE and we were like HECK YEAH WE WILL and we did! HOOO
man it was awesome. We ate. And we ate. And we ate some more. Plus it
was really good and on the spot and all made within an hour. Pretty
good stuff. Frere Bernardi is French, in his forties or so, and his
wife is from the La Reunion islands way east of Madagascar in the
Indian Ocean. Yeah. Cool huh? They're the video I sent you, that's in
their house today. Anyway had a great time, chatted and saw their
house and chilled with them, was really good important bonding time
with our ward mission leader and his family, and then we took a nice
relaxing Sunday afternoon/evening walk with them. It was really cool.
We can't do that every day, not even often but it was good, it felt
relaxing, reminded me of the importance of family, reminded me of our
Sunday walks, you guys, and I felt their love and yours.

That finished up the week for us.

One thought I had today--if you're here to serve your mission, (and
remember every member is a missionary), why be hesitant about
missionary work? Why avoid talking to people about Christ and the
gospel? That's what it's all about. So I need to not hesitate to go
out on the street or in the houses and apartment buidlings and tell
them what they need to hear. The Lord is with us. I love you guys.
Hope this email finds you all happy, healthy, and well. God bless you
and be with you.

Study conference! Apply those principles to your life. Amazing things will change and happen. 

Love you family and friends!!

You should all shoot me an email because let's be serious, you didn't
just read all that. :) Plus "you got a friend in me." It's true. Toy
story man. K just email me now please. :) Love you family!

Bye!!

Elder Edwards